vBulletin 5 or IPB or XenForo

[NTV]

I'm still unsatisfied with google searches, and the cost of these forum softwares are a big investment to me not only because of the money, also because I will be spending a lot of time on them.

What are the advantages/ disadvantages of each?

SEO? Speed? Server Intensive? Stability?

I was on vbulletin.com forums surprisingly I got server errors often and the forum seemed to take a while to load compared to XenForo and IPB.

I prefer people who have used these forums already or experienced how they work, not just random opinions that you "think" is the better forum.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Please let me know which you think I should buy overall. Also, I need some type of CMS.

[MentaL]

[belwixsugu]

What are the advantages/ disadvantages of each?

No advantages or disadvantages because xenforo created by vBulletin company too but if you asked for the difference, then i could say alot,vb is old but has a the larger community better with modifications and user features alot of top forum still there.XenForo have alot of idea compare to vb such as features and design are much more intuitive,styling customization,SEO and loading way too fast then other.IPB are same compare to vb and Xf the difference great mods,alot of functional and easy to use for newbies.

SEO? Speed? Server Intensive? Stability?

for speed,intensive and stability its not depend on the forum software its always depend on your hosting too. you need good hosting server.

I was on vbulletin.com forums surprisingly I got server errors often and the forum seemed to take a while to load compared to XenForo and IPB.

then you should contact the vb support team, they have good support team.

I prefer people who have used these forums already or experienced how they work, not just random opinions that you "think" is the better forum.

yes with experienced.

Please let me know which you think I should buy overall. Also, I need some type of CMS.

vb cms sucks, you should go for XenForo or IPB.

[Wokki]

I don't know about IPB, because I've never used it, but I have owned a 1 vB4 license and currently own 2 xenForo licenses.
You could probably already tell from that that I prefer xenForo over vBulletin. For me, vB was hard to modify. I didn't know how to change barely anything from it. Instead on xenForo thats simple, all you have to do is edit the templates a bit, which are really easy.

[George SS]

vBulletin templating system is weird , but once you get a hold of it , it just works. vBulletin is meant for large communities , such as RaGEZONE , with huge user base , and tons of topics , whereas XenoForo , well lets just say it isn't so popular. IPB on the other hand , is attractive and stuff , but it still has errors. You see like a year ago a friend opened a community , for some reason I could not use the editor at all , on ANY browser. Never had that problem with vBulletin.

Now as for vBulletin , it still had security holes on 4.x. (token exploitation and sql injection). I don't know if its fixed by now or not.

[Manova]

vB5 is a shitfest security wise. I advice you to stay away.

[Bryanek]

Id go for vB5 + vBSEO

[Cyndaquil]

I would go for IPB 100% any day. Best user satisfaction any day. Also its easy to use and got a lot of nice themes.